“If you forget her, I’ll give her back.”
He spoke the terms of an agreement he knew you could not hold up your end of, but what would you be if you didn’t try, for her? If you did not try to carefully discard each memory for the sake of the woman you love, what kind of pathetic creature would you be?
Sure, the process is painful; each memory you give up is a wound you leave open, willingly losing so much of yourself.
Because you grew so much with her love to guide you, and you don’t know what you would be without that.
But it doesn’t matter.
You have to try.
For her.
You forget the way she sang with you, her voice lending perfectly to yours.
You forget the way she danced, leading your clumsy steps in a way you could not have predicted.
You forget her green eyes, which saw more in you than you ever could.
You forget her hair, wrapped in ivy and leaves and twigs, the way you would brush your fingers through it.
You forget her lips, her nose, her ears, her arms.
But you can’t let one last bit go.
So you look back, even though everything else has faded from your mind.
When you wake up, you’ve always been single, sleeping alone night after night, lying draped in blank sheets, blank sheet music. There is no muse, you have never sung a duet.
And yet her name is still fresh on your lips. The name you know in the depths of your soul is a name that could rightfully blame you if she still had a voice. A name with no one behind it, meaningless and yet all your fault.
Just who is that ghost you wish you knew how to mourn?
Just who is the one you call Eurydice?